


so come over (just be patient & don't worry)

by disinclinant (orphan_account)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Getting Together, Getting to Know Each Other, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Post-War, Quiet, Rare Pairings, Slow Burn, Slytherins are people too
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-09-23 23:22:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20348515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/disinclinant
Summary: Theo just wants somewhere quiet and green and to be forgotten. Millicent understands.OR, two Slytherins after the war's end, growing.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> if you've read my cho x charlie fic, this is similar in that it's totally self-indulgent and quiet and slow, but with two different characters and a very different dynamic. the child abuse is implied and non-graphic and also from theo's past.
> 
> title from 'death and all his friends' by coldplay.

Millicent Bulstrode was ugly and she'd made her peace with that. 

She had a large, hooked nose and thick brows angled low over deep set, smallish eyes, thin lips, and a wan complexion. Her face was square and her jaw brutish, her hair tending to oiliness and textured like thatching, and her figure heavy with none of the attractive buxomness of, say, Madame Rosmerta. Her expression, generally, was always vageuly grim or dour. When she smiled, and that was rare, her teeth were yellow and a little crooked and her canines a bit too sharp, and her smile itself more of a grimace. Smiles didn't come naturally to Millicent. Prettiness _definitely_ didn't come naturally to Millicent.

But that was alright, as no one expected or had ever expected Millicent to be pretty or attractive or even appealing. Millicent had often thought this was great luck, as being _almost_ pretty to be more of a headache than just being flat-out ugly. Take Pansy, for example, who was pretty when she wasn't being bitchy or a twit, and sometimes even then, but would never be the kind of pretty the Greengrass sisters were (effortlessly), or Granger was (cozily), or the Patil twins were (fashionably), or Hannah Abbot was (cherubically), or Lavender Brown had been (with effort of the sort that meant she'd cared and been proud of it).

Forty percent of Pansy’s…._Pansyness_, had been her competitiveness with the levels of attractiveness of the people around her, and how many boys paid attention to her versus someone else, and etcetera, which Millicent had never really _gotten_ and found irritating at the best of times.

(Pansy was doing better now. She’d ‘found herself’ or whatever, which to Millicent seemed to mean that Pansy had decided to lean into her snarkiness as a perk of her personality rather than a weapon for or against herself).

But anyway. The point was: Millicent wasn’t pretty, and she was fine with that. And despite what happened one rainy Tuesday afternoon that seemed to suggest otherwise, this wasn’t going to be a story about a handsome and charming bloke that came into her life and brought forth some sort of deep-seated insecurity she’d been 'denying' until then. No wizard was going to inadvertently drive her to ‘make an effort’ with her appearance only for it to all end with Millicent both magically pretty and the bloke assuring her that her looks hadn’t been what had made him fall for her in the first place, it had been_ everything else._

First off, the ‘handsome and charming’ wizard was _Theodore Nott _who, while admittedly and somewhat accidentally handsome (in a sallow, sleep-deprived way), was definitely not _charming_. And secondly, he didn’t wander into Millicent’s life, because Theo didn’t wander. He skulked, shoulders hunched and hands perpetually shoved into his robe pockets. Seeing him skulk into her shop didn’t spark any deep-seated insecurity in Millicent so much as make her wonder what the hell he wanted.

Millicent sold plants—all sorts of plants, anything she could grow or breed or crossbreed, anything she was interested in and anything that would sell well in pots or baskets or as potions ingredients. From what she remembered of Theo (which wasn’t much, because Theo had made it an art to blend into the background so well you’d think he’d cast a permanent disillusionment charm on himself), he’d consistently gotten the weakest grades in Herbology of everyone in their year, and not for lack of trying. And she only remembered _that_ because Daphne’d been talking about it and worrying about Theo’s dad's reaction when his OWLs came in, because Daphne'd spent their entire fifth year futilely fancying Theo, who had never noticed. 

It didn't make sense for Theo to be here, now. He didn't care for plants and he couldn't be here to see _her_. They hadn't been friends in school, and only barely friendly in the way you were with the housemates in your year, and besides, Millicent had distanced herself after seventh year from everyone but Daphne and Pansy, and that was because Pansy loved an audience and Daphne, for reasons unbeknownst to Millicent, seemed to genuinely like her. 

She hadn't even gone back for her eighth year with the rest of most of her House. She hadn't seen the point, not when she could just pack up what remained of her father's construction business and her mother's inheritance post-reparations and get her life started. But neither, it seemed, had Theo.

"What're you looking for?" Millicent asked, which was her standard greeting for customers, and only rude if you cared about that sort of thing. (Millicent didn't). 

Theo blinked rain water out of his eyes and sidled out of the way of her door and said nothing, eyes tracking the greenery on the shelves and on tables and in planters and floating up by the ceiling where the sun globes were and not ever landing directly on her.

In the months since she'd last seen him, after he'd left in the beginning of seventh year, he hadn't changed much. He still stood with his shoulders rounded and his head half-ducked and his hands in his pockets. His hair was shorter, no longer curling into his eyes, and his jaw perhaps firmer and sharper, but that was it. He still had the same over-large, semi-permanent hollows under his eyes. He still reminded her of her old cat Mim, wary and distrustful and happiest when ignored and prone to scurrying under the nearest armchair and hiding there until she thought she’d been forgotten about. 

Millicent set down the bag of mulch with a grunt, and smartly rapped at the wandering creeper to get it to let go of her hair.

"Right," she said, "Be careful what you touch, don't cast any spells, and don't steal anything—I'll know. I've work to do." 

With that she turned her back on him and set to opening the mulch and distributing it where it was needed, by hand. Most magical plants were sensitive, and even when they weren't, too much magic affected the growing process in ways she couldn't always predict and would document on her own time, when she was in the mood for experimenting. It was like potions in that way.

About fifteen minutes in she'd half forgotten Theo was even there. He was quiet, a shadow in the corner of her eye, unobtrusive. It was only when he made a quietly startled sound that she looked up. 

The creeper was brushing at his face, over his ears and the bridge of his sharp nose, the flirt. 

"It does that," Millicent said, "Smack it and it'll stop." 

"It's fine," said Theo, voice startlingly rough though lighter than she remembered it being, and began to try to extricate himself carefully from the vines. All that happened was that his hands and fingers became more entangled until there was real risk of the vines being torn and a small chance the creeper would strangle Theo in its excitement. Millicent took pity on them both and strode over. 

"It doesn't hurt it," she said brusquely. "It's discipline." So saying, she thwacked at the larger tendrils until they all receded, wriggling, to the main stalk, and curled there sulkily. 

Theo's expression was flat but tucked into the corner of his mouth was distaste, or something like it. Millicent was not very good at many things—smiling or wandwork or arithmetic, to name a few—but she was very good with plants and things that required patience and firmness and a little indulgence every now and again.

"What would hurt it is getting tangled or breaking," she explained, in a calmer tone than she might have otherwise used. "It's just a babe right now, and curious. Can't let a babe touch everything willy nilly. It’s not safe.”

She met and held his gaze when Theo glanced at her from under the sweep of his dark lashes, his eyes guarded but bright. 

"I know what hurts my plants.”

He studied her for a moment that felt fraught, and she let him. Millicent was used to staring—her father had been a suspected Death Eater who'd run off and left them when the Dark Lord fell, and she had been a bully in school, and then there was her face and its lack of appeal. She’d gotten a lot of looks all her life, very few of them friendly. All Theo seemed to be doing was…assessing her.

Eventually he nodded, as though he’d decided something, and turned away, glancing out the large bay windows at the front of her shop. The view of her end of Diagon Alley was little more than streaks of colour and shapes and the vague forms of figures hurrying to and fro, the rain still falling heavily. Thunder rumbled distantly. Millicent followed Theo's gaze for a bit, wondering what he was looking for outside, and why he'd come in, but whatever he saw or didn't see had him shifting a little, shoulders relaxing. 

He still didn’t say anything, and she had work to do, so she left him to it. She had an alihotsy shrub’s leaves to carefully collect. 

Millicent was arranging the last of the hysteria inducing leaves in a pan to dry and then store when Theo’s footsteps, light but sure, approached. She glanced at him over her shoulder from behind the counter. 

“It’s nice in here,” he said, apropos of nothing. “I—“ He broke off, placed his hands on the counter, and then pushed them back into his robe pockets. "Nice seeing you Millie," he said finally, quietly. With that, he nodded at her, turned on his heel, and left. The door jingled, the sound of rain got momentarily louder, and then he was gone, head ducked against the downpour.

She wondered why he hadn’t cast an umbrella charm, or even just carried one. She wondered what the hell all that was about, and what he’d been about to say.

She absolutely did not wonder if he’d come by specifically to see her after all. Millicent was not that type of girl, that wizards who’d sort of known her sought out ages later, on the off chance of…anything. She concluded in the end that she had never really understood Theodore Nott, and that he was none of her business, and she had her actual business to preoccupy herself with, and got on with her day.

She’d probably never see him again, anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> continued and ongoing implication of child abuse, but nothing graphic. also, i know next to nothing about plants, gardening, or anything of the like. if anything is egregiously wrong pls tell me and i'll fix it.

Millicent finds out, inadvertently, why Theo had been in her shop. She doesn't keep abreast of _The Prophet_ all that consistently, but she does try to read the Sunday edition, just to keep on top of the political and social climate. Life’s safer if your head’s not stuck in the sand, she’s learned, and it’s also safer when you learn to read between the lines, and figure out what you should listen to and what you should ignore, no matter how pure the blood of the person speaking is, or how much gold they have. 

On the front page, as there has been all summer, is news of another trial. The last of the trials, since they started in June and it’s October now. This one is for Nott Sr., who'd been convicted of numerous charges and, apparently, sentenced to Azkaban the day Theo had popped into her shop. She skims the article, comes to a stop at Theo's name. 

They say he gave evidence, submitted pensive memories and to Veritaserum, but spin it in such a way as to suggest that even the children of Death Eaters didn't have the decency to be loyal to their parents. There's a begrudging effort to admit that Theo was a minor at the time of the war, some insinuations of Nott Sr.'s violent nature inside and outside his home, and yet the reporter _still_ seems to want to imply that Theo should be watched carefully, lest he lose it and curse the general public after his tumultuous and Dark upbringing. 

Millicent feels her lip curl. 

The article concludes with the amount of reparation given. The Nott estate has been dissolved and divided amongst different causes, their vaults seized. Theo, it says with unsubtle disapproval, has been allowed to keep a small inheritance accorded to him by his long-deceased mother, untouched by his father. 

Millicent flips back to the top of the article, to the picture of Nott Sr., wrists chained, flanked by a Ministry-accorded barrister, face set and cold, eyes glinting with fury. A powerful figure of a man, undiminished by his stay in Azkaban or his future there. Millicent thinks he’s lucky the Dementors are being dealt with.

There's another picture, small and tucked into the side midway through the page. It shows a dark head ducking behind a column. It's labeled, _Theodore Nott leaves the Atrium after giving testimony against his Death Eater father. _

Millicent shreds the newspaper and adds it to her compost mixture. Her Rumour Roses love gossip in their mulch.

She's...surprised, she decides. That Theo spoke up at all, that he spoke against his father especially. She can't decide if she thinks it was brave of him or stupid. She wonders if there was a need for it—if Nott Sr. would've escaped a guilty verdict without Theo's admissions. Harry Potter had submitted Nott Sr.'s name in the list of Death Eaters, it was true, but the new Ministry seems to want to give everyone their proper dues, haunted by Crouch's legacy, the tragedy of Sirius Black, and the complicated role Severus Snape played in the war. 

_Huh_, she thinks, and moves on with her day. Her mother wants her by for tea, which means her mother has other guests coming by and wants to present the "we're a healthy, well-adjusted family unit, despite our patriarch's conspicuous absence and our heir's incarceration". It's going to be exhausting. 

. 

. 

. 

It _is_ exhausting but on the bright side the Greengrass contingent are in attendance, which means Daphne's there, home from Hogwarts for the weekend, and Daphne is very good at filling silences so that Millicent doesn't have to try and won't admit to anything to make her mother frown disapprovingly her way. 

It's not exactly the height of accomplishment in Wizarding Society, to own and run a shop, let alone a shop for _plants_. Her mother's job now, _that_ can be coached as a hobby, an indulgence, and never mind that the gold is needed, to keep up appearances. By the end of the war, their coffers had been depleted by her father's support of the Dark Lord’s efforts, and what was left was taken for reparations when Toby was arrested. But compared to the Malfoys and, now, the Notts, the Bulstrodes got off easy. They're still allowed their wands and their homes and don’t have to report their movements to a probation officer. 

As though through Legilimency, Daphne sets down her cup of tea, frowning thoughtfully at the leaves at the bottom, and says, "Have you heard about Theo?" 

"Mm," says Millicent. 

Daphne, used to her taciturn ways, waits, blue eyes turned to meet Millicent's.

Their mothers, at the other end of the living room, laugh about something or other. 

"The trial was in the papers," Millicent says eventually, "I read it."

"Well, yes," says Daphne, tapping her perfect nails against the ceramic of her cup, a delicate staccato rhythm. "But that's not what I meant. Or not only. Blaise was there you know, as moral support, or something. Headmistress McGonagall gave him special dispensation to go. I think Blaise was really just there to make sure they didn't try to trump up charges for Theo though." 

Millicent raises a dark brow, pops a petitfour dusted with sparkling sugar into her mouth. Blaise has designs on being a barrister, and he certainly has the influence to be effective, let alone the cool rationality it requires. And his mother taught him everything she knew about people, which was saying something. She was on husband number six now. Men are generally stupid, true, but Mrs. Zabini is brilliant regardless.

"They didn't really try to," Daphne goes on, heedless of the direction of Millicent's thoughts. "But Blaise said they were tempted to. But—did you know Theo's stopped using magic?" 

Millicent pauses midchew, before swallowing. "Have they bound him?" _They_ being the aurors, which was what had been done for the Malfoys, Potter's testimony on their behalf notwithstanding. 

"No," says Daphne. "No, that’s just it! He's just. Stopped using his wand. Does things the Muggle way, apparently, or uses charms and potions when he has to." 

"Huh," says Millicent. This explains why he let himself get rained on. It doesn’t explain the lack of umbrella though.

Daphne frowns at her, tosses her fringe out of her eyes. "Is that all you have to say?" she demands. 

"Want more tea?" Millicent asks dryly, just to tease, and Daphne sighs and slumps against the seatback before straightening with a quick glance over her shoulder at their mothers, who have their heads bent over a book Millicent is sure the Ministry would confiscate if they knew Mrs. Bulstrode had it on hand. 

"Honestly, Millie," says Daphne, "I'm worried about him." 

"He's a grown wizard," Millicent says, after a bit. "Do you still fancy him?" 

To her credit, Daphne considers the question, which is why she's less of a headache to deal with than Pansy, and why Millicent likes her. Pansy would be haughty or shrill or turn the question around on Millicent. 

"No," is what Daphne eventually says. "No, but I've gotten used to thinking about him, I think. He was gone most of last year, you know. Alone in that house with his awful father." 

“Yeah, I remember," Millicent says. “Just...don't sound too worried, or you'll end up married to him."

"Oh no," says Daphne, flapping a hand, "Mother wants me for Zacharias Smith." 

Millicent makes a face, and Daphne snorts, unladylike. 

"I _know_," she says, "I'm hoping someone else will pop up and get me out of it." 

They move on from the topic of marriage quickly though, because their mothers call them over to grill Daphne on the happenings at Hogwarts, on how McGonagall is handling her headmistress duties, and if Astoria is still showing a worrying interest in the now re-reformed Muggle Studies. There’s no mention of the Notts, but Millicent still finds herself recalling that picture of Theo in the paper, his head bowed, and the damning caption beneath it.

.

.

.

Millicent has had a truly aggravating day. The shop today had been busier than usual, but with browsers more than buyers, and she’d gotten a last minute request for an arrangement of shrieking shrubs in preparation for a Halloween ball, as well as an order for eighteen jack o’lanterns. When she’d told the witch that the lanterns would need some time in a fog bank to develop their light and not to be alarmed that they didn’t glow yet, the woman had huffed aggressively and asked why Millicent didn’t have fully matured lanterns ready like a responsible horticulturist.

Never mind that they were only six days into October, or that a decent fog bank was easily conjureable, or that keeping matured jack o’lanterns in her shop was a magical fire hazard requiring permits and an exhausting amount of warding spells, or that she didn’t have the ideal space for them in the plot of land behind her manor house, because they were happiest on porch-steps and in windows.

Millicent had replied that the witch could leave if she couldn’t speak civilly, rather than explain all that.

The witch had said this was no way to keep customers, especially when everyone knew who her father was and what he'd done.

Millicent had replied that the she had plenty of customers and didn’t give a doxy’s arse about being polite in the face of bad manners, and furthermore, she didn’t appreciate being told how to run her business.

The witch had said some very insulting things after that and left, but not before trying to tip over the dancing daffodils in their window boxes (and failing, because Millicent had a ward around them to keep interfering magic and fingers out).

Millicent did not care, because she _did_ have a loyal stream of customers, and losing this woman’s business, and whoever else the woman decided to complain about Millicent to was no skin off her back, but she absolutely _despised_ being threatened, or being associated with her (still-missing murderer and terrorist of a) father, or people trying to damage her plants, and was all in all exhausted and in a foul mood.

So when the bell over the door rang out five minutes to closing Millicent had to take several deep breaths to keep her temper and emerge from the backroom with as un-murderous an expression as she could manage. 

It was Theo, looking much the same since she’d last seen him, except perhaps a little paler, the bags beneath his eyes a little more pronounced.

“Hi,” he says, approaching her counter, and ducking his head so his hair flopped over his eyes. “I know you’re almost closing. Sorry. I just.” He glances quickly up at her, looks away. "Do you have anything small and purple and. Um. Pretty?”

“Yeah,” says Millicent, “What do you need it for?” Because she has a lot of plants that fall into the 'small, purple, pretty’ category but where he’ll plant it, if he wants it potted, magical or mundane, and level of care means she’ll recommend him different plants. 

“A grave,” he says, which pulls her up short. There are a few things that would do well over a grave, but given what she knows of Theo’s ability to handle plants, she can really only recommend him one with good conscience.

“Carpet bugleweed,” she tells him with a nod, and plucks a sachet of the seeds from the drawer of just such sachets. They're her own invention, requiring only that they be sprinkled on wet soil to activate and grow, containing a time-and-moisture-delayed potion that speeds the germination time. Perfect for those who want a quick, largely self-sufficient garden. She cast a quick charm and an image of the flower blooms out of the sachet, purple and pretty, just like Theo asked for.

“Perfect,” he says, reaching out with a finger to touch the image, which dissolves it in a fall of sparks. He pulls his hand back and she tallies up the cost, tells him how to make it grow, and accepts his sickles. 

“They’re easy,” she adds, as he takes his sachet and pockets it. “And they grow fast and spread like a carpet, hence the name. They like the shade but they can handle sun, and they only need watering if it gets dry. And they’ll come back after the winter.”

“Ok,” says Theo, shuffles in place for a moment, and then lifts his head and looks her straight in the face. “They’re for Mum,” he admits. 

Millicent doesn’t know what to do with this information or why exactly he’s told her. So, she just says, “Alright. I’m closed now.”

“Right,” says Theo, blinking. “Right, sorry. And thanks.” 

He turns to go, and something in Millicent makes her call out, just as he sidles out the door, “Nice seeing you,” in an echo of their last meeting. He pauses, looks over his shoulder at her, and then the corner of his mouth hitches up in a faint smile. He lifts his hand, and then he’s gone, just one of the many shoppers in Diagon Alley.

Millicent huffs out a breath, shoots a locking spell at her door, and flips the sign to _closed._ She doesn’t know what’s gotten over her. She has a headache, and the shops needs tidying.

She doesn’t feel as angry as she did earlier though. Funny, that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI I LOVE THEM AND ALSO! thanks so much for reading and comments! i cant believe anybody cares but im so glad people do!!! next chapter will be up the next time i get bit by the productivity bug :D


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